A Museum's Secrets

Most (96%) of the MSI's exhibits are hidden away

we'll take you there

Metal doors are easy to miss when they're sandwiched between a stagecoach and a submarine.

But through this doorway at the Museum of Science and Industry -- past "Emergency Exit" and "Authorized Personnel Only" signs -- a museum within this museum exists.

This is the entrance to the MSI's vault of artifacts and past collections, a behind-the-scenes attic, where nearly 34,000 items await their chance to meet the public -- not that it actually feels like your everyday, dank and cluttered closet.

The collection area instead exudes order and sterility, as most items sit numbered and cataloged on tidy shelves. The only constant here, beyond the items' silence, is the endless whir of air conditioners.

Out front, the competition for space underneath the spotlights is cutthroat, despite the museum's maintaining about 400,000 square feet of exhibition space. Currently, less than 4 percent of the MSI's holdings appear on display.

As you can imagine, amassing such a collection takes years -- 78 in the MSI's case, as its founder acquired some objects four years before the museum opened in 1933. Now, 11 employees and countless volunteers spend nearly every day buying and borrowing, selling and sorting the items -- some of which have never been displayed, but are kept and preserved for conservation purposes.

"It's what we do," said Kathleen McCarthy, director of collections. "We're constantly working to get the best artifacts for our exhibits."

Today Tempo presents six of those artifacts, which for various reasons have long lived in storage.

The other 33,700 or so in the back will have to wait a bit longer.

ARMORED CAR

Royal P. Davidson lived a life obsessed with the military and motion.

As an instructor at Highland Park's Northwestern Military Academy, he had long supported horseback soldiers in warfare. When he saw his first automobile sometime in the 1890s, he believed he had finally seen the future of fighting.

Davidson ordered a 1,000-pound three-wheeled car from a Peoria manufacturer, which outfitted it with a 6-horsepower engine and a trio of 36-inch wheels. Davidson and his cadets then mounted a 7 mm Colt machine gun and armored the gas tank and engine.

The young teacher pronounced his device good.

In fact, he was so sure of his invention's military utility that he told both the press and the War Department that he would drive it from Chicago to Washington, D.C., a major undertaking at the time. Unfortunately for Davidson, mud, broken tires and a bent sparking rod ended his journey, barely 50 miles into Indiana.

But the teacher was not deterred.

Davidson had a new car built, this time with four wheels and more armor. The next year that vehicle completed the trip to Washington. Later he and the cadets drove it to San Francisco.

Eventually Davidson built several of the vehicles, including "No. 2," now owned by the MSI. The military eventually took notice. Historians trace the lineage of the modern-day Bradley Fighting Vehicle back to Davidson's vehicles.

MINIATURE BOOKS

For more than 50 years, the Fairy Castle has reigned as one of the museum's most popular exhibits, but not all of the miniature items created for it appear within its walls.

Colleen Moore, a star from cinema's silent era, commissioned the elaborate dollhouse in 1928. Seven years -- and 700 craftsmen later -- it was complete, with its own mini-china set, bearskin rug (actually ermine) and jewel-encrusted chandeliers. Moore donated the house, later called the Fairy Castle, to the museum in 1950.

One set of items left out of the MSI display is a collection of miniature books, which staff consider too delicate to properly display. (Photos of one book appear on MSI's Web site.)

Measuring about an inch wide and tall, the books contain short stories or abbreviated musical scores, often written in the hand of the famous author or composer.

GEISHA

A Japanese delegate to Chicago's 1960 International Trade Fair gifted this life-size statue to Mayor Richard J. Daley, who later donated it to the MSI.

Museum staff believe the geisha has never been displayed there, although for 40 years she appeared just up Lake Shore Drive at the International Museum of Surgical Science, on loan for an exhibit on "Medicine in Japanese."

Today she stands in the MSI archives, still holding her original dried cherry blossoms and folding fan.

SPECTRO-CHROME

When Dinshah P. Ghadiali immigrated to the United States from India in 1911, he brought with him a theory that substances in the body, such as oxygen and carbon, had a corresponding color associated with them.

Feeling sick?

Then one of your colors probably glows too brightly or dimly, Ghadiali believed, or at least professed. His cure for such ills included staring into the device seen here, which Ghadiali invented and called a Spectro-Chrome -- a box with a 1,000-watt light bulb and various colored gels.